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Yes, The Middle East is Like Planet of the Apes

Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi loves the Planet of the Apes movies. He thinks that they offer a lesson for humanity, although exactly what Morsi thinks is difficult to decipher from his Time Magazine interview:

Escape from the Planet of the Apes (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I remember a movie. Which one? Planet of the Apes. The old version, not the new one. There is new one. Which is different. Not so good. It’s not expressing the reality as it was the first one. But at the end, I still remember, this is the conclusion: When the big monkey, he was head of the supreme court I think — in the movie! — and there was a big scientist working for him, cleaning things, has been chained there. And it was the planet of the apes after the destructive act of a big war, and atomic bombs and whatever in the movie. And the scientists was asking him to do something, this was 30 years ago: “Don’t forget you are a monkey.” He tells him, “Don’t ask me about this dirty work.” What did the big ape, the monkey say? He said, “You’re human, you did it [to] yourself.” That’s the conclusion. Can we do something better for ourselves?

It has been years since I’ve seen Planet of the Apes, but Morsi seems to be mixing movies. Charlton Heston’s human astronaut was tried by an ape court in 1968′s Planet of the Apes, but he wasn’t a janitor for the simians. The apes were slaves performing menial work for humans in 1972′s Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, but I don’t remember a court room trial. Either way, I think I see Morsi’s point, which is that humanity is responsible for its own unhappy fate in the Ape movies.

But the wonderful thing is that 46 years later, the original Planet of the Apes (not the awful 2001 remake) is still a perfect metaphor for our world. The script, penned by Rod Serling and based on a 1963 novel by Pierre Boulle, cleverly used civilized apes and savage humans to address 1960s issues such as civil rights (“some apes, it seems, are more equal than others”) and nuclear war.

Planet of the Apes is still a metaphor for the Middle East. In fact, it’s a grab bag of metaphors that everyone can dip into to support their politics. If you are pro-Israel, you can claim that how the poor humans are hunted down, killed, or used for scientific experiments is an illustration of Jewish history and why the Jewish people need a safe and secure nation of their own. And if you are pro-Palestinian, you can claim that the oppression of the humans by the apes is what Palestinians endure in the West Bank. And if you think both sides in the Middle East are crazy, you can claim that the ultimate fate of humans and apes in the movie is a good reason to make peace.

When I was a kid, theaters would run Planet of the Apes festivals, where they show the first five movies all night. Perhaps we should do the same for Morsi, Netanyahu and the Palestinian leaders. The popcorn is on me.

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